Burying Gaza: How Israel's Military Put Away the Oranim Revelations

Related Post: The Israeli Military and Gaza’s Civilians - Returning to The Oranim Transcripts

I was working yesternoon afternoon when the news came through, via the Jerusalem Post, that the Israeli military had categorically dismissed accounts --- all but two from the graduates of military course at Oranim College ---of the abuse and killing of civilians in the Gaza War.

I was struck by how quickly the Israel Defense Forces threw out the claims, noted by nine Israeli human rights groups: ""The speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that the very opening of this investigation was merely the army's attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity during Operation Cast Lead."

Even more blatant, however, was the disconnect between the military's "findings" and the actual statements of the Oranim soldiers.

For example, the Post noted the IDF's conclusion report on "Aviv", who "claimed to have known of a soldier who had been given orders to fire at an elderly Palestinian woman. During his interrogation, Aviv admitted he had never witnessed such an incident and that he'd based his statement on a rumor he had heard."

In fact, it is unclear from the original testimony "Aviv" never claimed in his testimony, reprinted in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and on this website, whether he witnessed the order by a company commander to a sniper squad to kill the woman, who was walking in a prohibited area. It is clear, however, that he was under orders to use deadly force to ensure "that we wouldn’t get hurt and they wouldn’t fire on us":

[We were] to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier..., to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside....From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled.

Significantly (and unnoted in the Post article, "Zvi" follows the testimony of "Aviv" with the clarification that this was "force protection" and not the deliberate murder of civilians:

Aviv’s descriptions are accurate, but it’s possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don’t know whether she’s … She wasn’t supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn’t be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn’t right.

Put bluntly, the Israeli military invaded one of the most densely-populated areas in the world and marked off parts of it as "prohibited", with shoot-to-kill orders against anyone who trespassed. The Israeli military could have stated this: inevitably civilians were going to die in a war.

Even this, however, could not be admitted. Instead, the Oranim testimony had to be discredited: "A claim made by a different soldier, Ram, who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children, was also found by the probe to be false."

This was a blatant distortion of the testimony of "Ram", who made clear that it was not he but a sharpshooter who killed the woman and children after a breakdown in communication:

There was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn’t open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters’ position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.

In the Gaza War of public opinion, Israel's effort was to ensure that it always held the higher moral ground. That, however, is difficult when Israel and not Hamas had overwhelming force, and that force --- inevitably --- was being used against civilians. In recent weeks, reports by bodies such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch had detailed the humanitarian costs, but the Oranim revelations were even more damaging. They came from within Israeli ranks.

So Tel Aviv had to step up its "information" campaign. Reporters were summoned to a briefing by an armoured unit commander, Colonel Roi Elkabets, to give "examples of what he said were the dilemmas they faced". Ethan Bronner of The New York Times wrote accordingly, "Officers are stepping forward, some at the urging of the top command, others on their own, offering numerous accounts of having held their fire out of concern for civilians, helping Palestinians in need and punishing improper soldier behavior".

And the campaign, far more effectively than the military invasion of Gaza, worked. Today's British and American media faithfully cite the IDF's findings on Oranim, "The Israeli military on Monday rejected allegations that its soldiers committed atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza" (CNN); "Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, the IDF's advocate general, found no evidence to support the most serious accusations, including alleged instances in which civilians were shot without cause" (Washington Post); "The military police found that the crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge" (New York Times).

None of those reporters referred to the original Oranim transcripts.

War is about winning, not about the truth. So one can set aside last week's commentary by Larry Derfner, ironically in the same Jerusalem Post that moved quickly to put the military's "findings2:

We can refuse to think about this, we can tell ourselves that Oranim is a hotbed of left-wingers, we can bury this so the anti-Semites and The Hague don't use it against us. Or we can admit the truth and decide that we have to change.

We can be loyal to Israel's image. Or we can be loyal to our sons.

The Afghanistan Effect: US-Iran Talks Today?

CNN has a wonderfully naive story this morning, based on the public position of the US Secretary of State, "Clinton doesn't rule out Iran talks at Afghanistan conference". It puts out Hillary Clinton's statement, as more than 80 countries gather at The Hague for discussions:

I believe that there will be an opening by this conference that will enable all the countries, including Iran, to come forward. The fact that they accepted the invitation to come suggests that they believe there is a role for them to play, and we're looking forward to hearing more about that.

The wonderful naiveté is in CNN's assumption that direct US-Iran talks would be at high level:

Clinton said she has "no plans" to meet with Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akoundzadeh, who is attending the conference. But she left open the possibility, saying she would not predict how the discussions would flow.

As anyone who has braved such an event probably knows, most of the substantive negotiations occur away from the conference table amongst the teams of supporting officials who accompany Secretaries of State and Foreign Ministers. Indeed, that was the pattern of US-Iran talks on Afghanistan after 9-11 until spring 2003, when they were broken by the Bush Administration in favour of thoughts of regime change in Tehran.

(CNN's innocent re-telling of the US-Iran relationship puts it this way: "Clinton noted Iran's history of cooperating with the United States on Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2001. In 2003, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad held talks with Iranian officials in Geneva, Switzerland, about how the two countries could work together.")

CNN also seems to have no knowledge that these US-Iran talks, as we wrote on Sunday, have already resumed in places like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Moscow.

Those looking for real signals on what may come should note Iran's careful consderation of the level of representation at the conference. Tehran has not sent its Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, withholding the open declaration of high-level equality in interchange. Even more importantly, the Iranian representative to the Shanghai talks --- the same Mohammad Mehdi Akoundzadeh who will be at The Hague --- has put down a marker on the US military approach:

The presence of foreign troops cannot bring peace and stability for Afghanistan. It encourages radicalism.

Politically Akounzadeh is making clear that Iran does not want the US, and US-Iran talks at the centre of the Afghanistan process:

Resolving ongoing problems in Afghanistan will be possible through regional partnership and Islamic Republic of Iran supports this stance....He said that the Americans have linked Afghan issue to their own internal problems, considering Afghanistan from an American angle, while this policy and strategy has never been successful, rather it has increased problems in Afghanistan and the region.

Instead, Iran will be seeking in any talks to make Washington one of a number of players in an Afghanistan solution, rather than the leader of the pack.

The Israeli Military and Gaza's Civilians: Returning to The Oranim Transcripts

Related Post: Burying Gaza - How Israel’s Military Put Away the Oranim Revelations

"In effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified - we were supposed to shoot."

The Israeli military has now completed its investigation of the claims made by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory program, held at Oranim Academic College, of abuses by the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The Military Police completed its official investigation into the accounts on Monday and concluded that they were categorically false and based on rumors....The probe also concluded that the stories of the soldiers who participated in the conference were purposely exaggerated and made extreme, in order to make a point to the participants at the conference. The IDF Advocate-General Brig.-Gen. Avihai Mandelblit decided to close the case in the wake of the findings.

We will comment on the "investigation" in a separate blog. For the moment, here are the extracts from the soldiers' accounts, as they appeared in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:

Danny Zamir: "I don't intend for us to evaluate the achievements and the diplomatic-political significance of Operation Cast Lead this evening, nor need we deal with the systemic military aspect [of it]. However, discussion is necessary because this was, all told, an exceptional war action in terms of the history of the IDF, which has set new limits for the army's ethical code and that of the State of Israel as a whole.

"This is an action that sowed massive destruction among civilians. It is not certain that it was possible do have done it differently, but ultimately we have emerged from this operation and are not facing real paralysis from the Qassams. It is very possible that we will repeat such an operation on a larger scale in the years to come, because the problem in the Gaza Strip is not simple and it is not at all certain that it has been solved. What we want this evening is to hear from the fighters."

Aviv: "I am squad commander of a company that is still in training, from the Givati Brigade. We went into a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City. Altogether, this is a special experience. In the course of the training, you wait for the day you will go into Gaza, and in the end it isn't really like they say it is. It's more like, you come, you take over a house, you kick the tenants out and you move in. We stayed in a house for something like a week.

"Toward the end of the operation there was a plan to go into a very densely populated area inside Gaza City itself. In the briefings they started to talk to us about orders for opening fire inside the city, because as you know they used a huge amount of firepower and killed a huge number of people along the way, so that we wouldn't get hurt and they wouldn't fire on us.

"At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified - we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?

"From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled. I didn't really understand: On the one hand they don't really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they're telling us they hadn't fled so it's their fault ... This also scared me a bit. I tried to exert some influence, insofar as is possible from within my subordinate position, to change this. In the end the specification involved going into a house, operating megaphones and telling [the tenants]: 'Come on, everyone get out, you have five minutes, leave the house, anyone who doesn't get out gets killed.'

"I went to our soldiers and said, 'The order has changed. We go into the house, they have five minutes to escape, we check each person who goes out individually to see that he has no weapons, and then we start going into the house floor by floor to clean it out ... This means going into the house, opening fire at everything that moves , throwing a grenade, all those things. And then there was a very annoying moment. One of my soldiers came to me and asked, 'Why?' I said, 'What isn't clear? We don't want to kill innocent civilians.' He goes, 'Yeah? Anyone who's in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact.' I said, 'Do you think the people there will really run away? No one will run away.' He says, 'That's clear,' and then his buddies join in: 'We need to murder any person who's in there. Yeah, any person who's in Gaza is a terrorist,' and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media.

"And then I try to explain to the guy that not everyone who is in there is a terrorist, and that after he kills, say, three children and four mothers, we'll go upstairs and kill another 20 or so people. And in the end it turns out that [there are] eight floors times five apartments on a floor - something like a minimum of 40 or 50 families that you murder. I tried to explain why we had to let them leave, and only then go into the houses. It didn't really help. This is really frustrating, to see that they understand that inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want, to break down doors of houses for no reason other than it's cool.

"You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing in understanding how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

"One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road, a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious - I don't know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood."

Zamir: "I don't understand. Why did he shoot her?"

Aviv: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn't see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her."

Zvi: "Aviv's descriptions are accurate, but it's possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don't know whether she's ... She wasn't supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn't be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn't right. It's known that they have lookouts and that sort of thing."

Gilad: "Even before we went in, the battalion commander made it clear to everyone that a very important lesson from the Second Lebanon War was the way the IDF goes in - with a lot of fire. The intention was to protect soldiers' lives by means of firepower. In the operation the IDF's losses really were light and the price was that a lot of Palestinians got killed."

Ram: "I serve in an operations company in the Givati Brigade. After we'd gone into the first houses, there was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn't open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters' position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

Question from the audience: "At what range was this?"

Ram: "Between 100 and 200 meters, something like that. They had also came out of the house that he was on the roof of, they had advanced a bit and suddenly he saw then, people moving around in an area where they were forbidden to move around. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way."

Yuval Friedman (chief instructor at the Rabin program): "Wasn't there a standing order to request permission to open fire?"

Ram: "No. It exists, beyond a certain line. The idea is that you are afraid that they are going to escape from you. If a terrorist is approaching and he is too close, he could blow up the house or something like that."

Zamir: "After a killing like that, by mistake, do they do some sort of investigation in the IDF? Do they look into how they could have corrected it?"

Ram: "They haven't come from the Military Police's investigative unit yet. There hasn't been any ... For all incidents, there are individual investigations and general examinations, of all of the conduct of the war. But they haven't focused on this specifically."

Moshe: "The attitude is very simple: It isn't pleasant to say so, but no one cares at all. We aren't investigating this. This is what happens during fighting and this is what happens during routine security."

Ram: "What I do remember in particular at the beginning is the feeling of almost a religious mission. My sergeant is a student at a hesder yeshiva [a program that combines religious study and military service]. Before we went in, he assembled the whole platoon and led the prayer for those going into battle. A brigade rabbi was there, who afterward came into Gaza and went around patting us on the shoulder and encouraging us, and praying with people. And also when we were inside they sent in those booklets, full of Psalms, a ton of Psalms. I think that at least in the house I was in for a week, we could have filled a room with the Psalms they sent us, and other booklets like that.

"There was a huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out. The Education Corps published a pamphlet for commanders - something about the history of Israel's fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present. The rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles, and ... their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war. From my position as a commander and 'explainer,' I attempted to talk about the politics - the streams in Palestinian society, about how not everyone who is in Gaza is Hamas, and not every inhabitant wants to vanquish us. I wanted to explain to the soldiers that this war is not a war for the sanctification of the holy name, but rather one to stop the Qassams."

Zamir: "I would like to ask the pilots who are here, Gideon and Yonatan, to tell us a little about their perspective. As an infantryman, this has always interested me. How does it feel when you bomb a city like that?"

Gideon: "First of all, about what you have said concerning the crazy amounts of firepower: Right in the first foray in the fighting, the quantities were very impressive, very large, and this is mainly what sent all the Hamasniks into hiding in the deepest shelters and kept them from showing their faces until some two weeks after the fighting.

"In general the way that it works for us, just so you will understand the differences a bit, is that at night I would come to the squadron, do one foray in Gaza and go home to sleep. I go home to sleep in Tel Aviv, in my warm bed. I'm not stuck in a bed in the home of a Palestinian family, so life is a little better.

"When I'm with the squadron, I don't see a terrorist who is launching a Qassam and then decide to fly out to get him. There is a whole system that supports us, that serves as eyes, ears and intelligence for every plane that takes off, and creates more and more targets in real-time, of one level of legitimacy or another. In any case, I try to believe that these are targets [determined according to] the highest possible level of legitimacy.

"They dropped leaflets over Gaza and would sometimes fire a missile from a helicopter into the corner of some house, just to shake up the house a bit so everyone inside would flee. These things worked. The families came out, and really people [i.e., soldiers] did enter houses that were pretty empty, at least of innocent civilians. From this perspective it works.

"In any case, I arrive at the squadron, I get a target with a description and coordinates, and basically just make sure it isn't within the line of our forces. I look at the picture of the house I am suppose to attack, I see that it matches reality, I take off, I push the button and the bomb takes itself exactly to within one meter of the target itself."

Zamir: "Among the pilots, is there also talk or thoughts of remorse? For example, I was terribly surprised by the enthusiasm surrounding the killing of the Gaza traffic police on the first day of the operation: They took out 180 traffic cops. As a pilot, I would have questioned that."

Gideon: "There are two parts to this. Tactically speaking, you call them 'police.' In any case, they are armed and belong to Hamas ... During better times, they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.

"With regard to the thoughts, you sit with the squadron and there are lots of discussions about the value-related significance of the fighting, about what we are doing; there is a lot to talk about. From the moment you start the plane's engine until the moment you turn it off, all of your thoughts, all of your concentration and all of your attention are on the mission you have to carry out. If you have an unjustified doubt, you're liable to cause a far greater screw-up and knock down a school with 40 children. If the building I hit isn't the one I am supposed to hit, but rather a house with our guys inside - the price of the mistake is very, very high."

Question from the audience: "Was there anyone in the squadron who didn't push the button, who thought twice?"

Gideon: "That question should be addressed to those involved in the helicopter operation, or to the guys who see what they do. With the weapons I used, my ability to make a decision that contradicts what they told me up to that point is zero. I dispatch the bomb from a range within which I can see the entire Gaza Strip. I also see Haifa, I also see Sinai, but it's more or less the same. It's from really far away."

Yossi: "I am a platoon sergeant in an operations company of the Paratroops Brigade. We were in a house and discovered a family inside that wasn't supposed to be there. We assembled them all in the basement, posted two guards at all times and made sure they didn't make any trouble. Gradually, the emotional distance between us broke down - we had cigarettes with them, we drank coffee with them, we talked about the meaning of life and the fighting in Gaza. After very many conversations the owner of the house, a man of 70-plus, was saying it's good we are in Gaza and it's good that the IDF is doing what it is doing.

"The next day we sent the owner of the house and his son, a man of 40 or 50, for questioning. The day after that, we received an answer: We found out that both are political activists in Hamas. That was a little annoying - that they tell you how fine it is that you're here and good for you and blah-blah-blah, and then you find out that they were lying to your face the whole time.

"What annoyed me was that in the end, after we understood that the members of this family weren't exactly our good friends and they pretty much deserved to be forcibly ejected from there, my platoon commander suggested that when we left the house, we should clean up all the stuff, pick up and collect all the garbage in bags, sweep and wash the floor, fold up the blankets we used, make a pile of the mattresses and put them back on the beds."

Zamir: "What do you mean? Didn't every IDF unit that left a house do that?"

Yossi: "No. Not at all. On the contrary: In most of the houses graffiti was left behind and things like that."

Zamir: "That's simply behaving like animals."

Yossi: "You aren't supposed to be concentrating on folding blankets when you're being shot at."

Zamir: "I haven't heard all that much about you being shot at. It's not that I'm complaining, but if you've spent a week in a home, clean up your filth."

Aviv: "We got an order one day: All of the equipment, all of the furniture - just clean out the whole house. We threw everything, everything, out of the windows to make room. The entire contents of the house went flying out the windows."

Yossi: "There was one day when a Katyusha, a Grad, landed in Be'er Sheva and a mother and her baby were moderately to seriously injured. They were neighbors of one of my soldiers. We heard the whole story on the radio, and he didn't take it lightly - that his neighbors were seriously hurt. So the guy was a bit antsy, and you can understand him. To tell a person like that, 'Come on, let's wash the floor of the house of a political activist in Hamas, who has just fired a Katyusha at your neighbors that has amputated one of their legs' - this isn't easy to do, especially if you don't agree with it at all. When my platoon commander said, 'Okay, tell everyone to fold up blankets and pile up mattresses,' it wasn't easy for me to take. There was lot of shouting. In the end I was convinced and realized it really was the right thing to do. Today I appreciate and even admire him, the platoon commander, for what happened there. In the end I don't think that any army, the Syrian army, the Afghani army, would wash the floor of its enemy's houses, and it certainly wouldn't fold blankets and put them back in the closets."

Zamir: "I think it would be important for parents to sit here and hear this discussion. I think it would be an instructive discussion, and also very dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low value norms, that's the truth ... I am not judging you and I am not complaining about you. I'm just reflecting what I'm feeling after hearing your stories. I wasn't in Gaza, and I assume that among reserve soldiers the level of restraint and control is higher, but I think that all in all, you are reflecting and describing the kind of situation we were in.

"After the Six-Day War, when people came back from the fighting, they sat in circles and described what they had been through. For many years the people who did this were said to be 'shooting and crying.' In 1983, when we came back from the Lebanon War, the same things were said about us. We need to think about the events we have been through. We need to grapple with them also, in terms of establishing a standard or different norms.

"It is quite possible that Hamas and the Syrian army would behave differently from me. The point is that we aren't Hamas and we aren't the Syrian army or the Egyptian army, and if clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum in the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population - what are we expecting? To whom are we complaining?

"As reservists we don't take relate seriously to the orders of the regional brigades. We let the old people go through and we let families go through. Why kill people when it's clear to you that they are civilians? Which aspect of Israel's security will be harmed, who will be harmed? Exercise judgment, be human."

Transcript: David Petraeus and Richard Holbrooke on CNN (29 March)

HOST JOHN KING: General Petraeus, let me start with the threshold question for you, how many troops will it take? How long will it be.

PETRAEUS: Well, as you know, John, the president and President Bush before him have set in motion orders for troops that will more than double the number that were on the ground at the beginning of the year. We'll get those on the ground. We'll take a lot of effort with infrastructure, logistics and so forth, start employing those in the months that lie ahead. They'll all be on the ground by the end of the summer and the early fall.

And along the way we'll be doing the assessments. And among those assessments, of course, will be the kinds of questions about force levels, about additional civilians and other resources as well.

KING: General McKiernan, your commander on the ground, had been up-front that he needed even more troops. Why did the president say no?

PETRAEUS: Well, he certainly hasn't said no.

What everyone has said is let's get these forces on the ground. Every request for forces and every recommendation that General McKiernan and I made through this year, this entire year, has been approved. And, as I said, we'll take that forward, do the assessments. And I think it'd be premature to get beyond that right now.

KING: Ambassador Holbrooke, before we get to your challenges in the diplomacy, I want you to take us inside the deliberations about this strategy, because as you know, many Democrats have warned this could be President Obama's Vietnam, that you're sending more troops into an area where you still have huge problems on the Pakistani side of the border -- and we'll talk about that -- with corruption and other issues on the Afghan side of the border. And we'll talk in more detail about that. But take us inside the room when it comes to the risk assessment for this president at this moment.

HOLBROOKE: First of all, John, I served in Vietnam for three and half years, and I'm aware of certain structural similarities. But there's a fundamental difference. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese never posed any direct threat to the United States and its homeland. The people we are fighting in Afghanistan, and the people they are sheltering in Western Pakistan pose a direct threat. Those are the men of 9/11, the people who killed Benazir Bhutto. And you can be sure that, as we sit here today, they are planning further attacks on the United States and our allies.

In terms of the deliberation itself, the president shared at least four meetings, by my count, of the full National Security Council -- very unusual, very impressive. He ran the meetings himself. I've been in meetings with presidents since Lyndon Johnson in whose White House I served. And I have never seen a president take charge of a meeting the way President Obama did continually.

In other meetings without the president present, General Jones, his national security adviser, his deputy Tom Donilon, and the senior members of the administration, including Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates and the military command, including my colleague and friend David Petraeus, all had a vigorous debate. The vice president participated heavily. And in these discussions, John, I can assure you, and through you everyone who's watching, that every single option was considered, its pros and cons. A convergence and a consensus was immediate, that we couldn't walk away from the situation, no matter how bad it was and how bad the situation we had inherited was.

Then the issue became what do we do about it? All the options were considered. On the civilian side, we focused on the agricultural sector, which has been neglected. And yet it's an agricultural sector -- country. We focused on creating jobs. On the informational side, Dave Petraeus and I agree that we don't have a strong enough counter- informational program to combat the Taliban and Al Qaida, and so on and so forth down a wide range of issues.

From this review, Dave Petraeus and I are now going to sit down and plot the most serious integration of civilian and military activities that we can -- we have had in our time. We're going to integrate the policy like it's never been done before. And, in fact, Dave and I are now planning a retreat to do just that.

KING: Well, let me -- let me talk about the challenge ahead, because no matter how right or how smart the United States is this time -- and you, obviously, in saying what you just said, Mr. Ambassador, you're criticizing what happened in the previous administration. But I don't to look backwards. For you to succeed, you need partners. And I want to play something that then-Candidate Obama told our Fareed Zakaria back in 2008 about the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai -- the president of the United States, now, saying, back then, he didn't have much trust. Let's listen

I'm sorry, we don't have that sound for you. But here is what he said back in 2008. He said: I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped to organize Afghanistan and government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence. So there are a lot of problems there.

General, if there are a lot of problems there, have those problems been fixed? Or are you sending more U.S. troops into a country that can't organize and run itself?

PETRAEUS: Well, first of all, it's a comprehensive effort. And among the various lines of operation, if you will, are diplomatic lines that will be spearheaded by the ambassadors in both countries and with Ambassador Holbrooke, of course overseeing that. Among that effort has to be, without question, the strengthening -- the building in some cases -- of the kind of trust, cooperation, coordination that is necessary to deal with the problems that have emerged over the years.

It is no secret that the legitimacy of the Afghan government has been challenged by the corruption and some of the other issues there. President Karzai has appointed corruption committees, has made important starts, appointed some good officials, among them Minister of Interior Atmar. That now needs to be moved forward, as we run up to the elections. And then beyond, of course, it would be very important that we all work together to combat the kinds of issues that we discussed.

KING: You say it needs to be more forward. But Ambassador, I want you in on this point, because you have called corruption a cancer in Afghanistan. President Karzai's been in charge of seven years, first of an interim government, a transitional government. He's been president for four and a half years. If there is a cancer of corruption in Afghanistan, and he has been in charge for seven years, is he not part of the problem?

HOLBROOKE: There isn't any question that the government has corruption at high levels. I've said it as a private citizen, and I'm not going to repudiate anything I said as a private citizen. President Karzai called me right after the president's speech, which he which he watched live on CNN. He said it was a great speech, and he agreed with every word of it. And you will note that the president, for the first time at the presidential level, addressed corruption directly and frontally.

I will be meeting with President Karzai tomorrow in the Hague, in advance of the secretary of state's arrival there for this big international conference. Hillary Clinton will meet with Karzai the following day, the day after tomorrow. We will talk about corruption to him as we have before.

We do think it's a cancer. President Karzai says publicly that he agrees with that. And now it's up to his government to take action. But I would stress to you, John, that there is an election coming up on August 20th, the second election in Afghanistan's history. It's a hugely important election. President -- Secretary Clinton will address that in her remarks on Tuesday. And that election will be a chance for the people to vote on these issues.

KING: General Petraeus, I want you to come with me so we can take a closer look at the source of the issue here. And Ambassador Holbrooke, I believe you can see this on a monitor you have up in New York. This is your range of territory, General. You cover all this. But the problem at the moment is right here. And I want to pull out this border region just a little bit more and bring it over to the center, and pull this out a bit, so people can see what we're looking at.

Now, you believe the problem is as much on this side as on this side. So the U.S. troops are going here into Afghanistan. But many would say you're sending the fire department here, when the fire is here, that Al Qaida and the Taliban are on this side of the border. How confident are you that sending troops here will deal with the problem here in the context of trust? We just talked about trust with President Karzai. Do you trust -- let me ask you a simple question first. Do you tell the Pakistani military the most sensitive U.S. secrets? Or can you not trust that that information will be passed on to their security services and them onto the terrorists?

PETRAEUS: Well, first, let me just say that it's very important that the fire department address the fires that have sprung up in the eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan without question.

PETRAEUS: And then it's critically important that the fire department, if you will, in Pakistan, do the same thing in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

And if you move this down here, in fact, I just talked to General Kayani and had an update from him on operations that are ongoing in Bajaur and Mohmand, which are part of the Federally Administered Tribal agencies, some of which you have here.

And also in Khyber. They have just launched another operation in Mohmand. Clearly there has to be the establishment of true trust there as well. We discussed that actually this morning.

There is a substantial and significant and sustained commitment that is part of this Af-Pak strategy that was announced on Friday. We've had ups and downs between our countries over the years. We've now got to get on an up and stay on an up with them. And again, working our way forward in that regard has to be critical.

KING: And when you say we need to establish true trust, again, at a time of economic recession at home, when American families are struggling, we have given Pakistan more than $12 billion in recent years in aid and we don't have true trust?

PETRAEUS: Well, we have had ups and downs. Now, it is important to point out that there has been progress in these areas. It's significant to note that for a variety -- through a variety of ways, nine of the top 20 extremist leaders in this area -- let's remember, this is where the al Qaeda and transnational extremists are that have -- that were the ones that launched the 9/11 attacks, of course, and have launched attacks more recently in the U.K., Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and other areas.

So very important to get into this. We have established, as an example, a joint coordination center just here just across the Khyber Pass. That is the kind of building trust that is very important where we're providing the products of intelligence activities and so forth and we see the building with the frontier core, with the other elements of the Pakistani military that are active there, the kind of cooperation and coordination necessary.

I should add that it's also important that this be trilateral. And in fact, as Richard explains frequently, the intelligence services of these two countries, which have had quite a bit enmity between them, they also have to cooperate and we're going to work together, all of us, to try to foster that cooperation as well. KING: And, Ambassador, to that point, how difficult is -- already difficult and incredibly complicated and sensitive diplomacy, how much more difficult is it if you can't be sure that you share a secret, you share some sensitive information with somebody in Pakistan and there is a history of this information being passed on to the security services and then in some cases passed on to the al Qaeda and Taliban?

HOLBROOKE: Well, of course, you're absolutely right, John. It's a huge concern for General Petraeus and me. Leon Panetta made his first trip as director of central intelligence to this region. This is going to be his focus.

We have started a new trilateral process of the leaders of the two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, coming to the United States. They came in late February to advise us on the strategic review. Both -- Karzai also praised the president's speech, by the way.

And now we are planning a new session for early May which Leon Panetta, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Vice President Biden, and others will join Secretary Clinton, General Petraeus, and me, and Bob Gates to participate in.

In all of these issues, we have to break down what you just referred to and what the Pakistani foreign minister himself called the trust deficit. You're absolutely right. There is a -- the relationship between Pakistan and the United States is immensely complicated and it isn't quite where it should be.

And the new focus on Pakistan and what General Petraeus just referred to as Af-Pak, Afghanistan-Pakistan, is designed to emphasize the fact that as we move forward, we need to focus as much on Pakistan, but with one key caveat, John. As the foreign minister of Pakistan has said publicly and repeatedly, there cannot be American combat boots, combat troops on the ground in western Pakistan.

So when you talk about fighting the fire on the other side of the border, we are constrained in going after people on that side of the border, even though they are the ones, to a large extent, planning further attacks.

This is the challenge of a uniquely difficult problem. Now we're recommitted to it and General Petraeus and I are shoulder-to-shoulder in this effort.

KING: I want to go to a quick break, but before I do, on this point -- and we'll have much more discussion, but on that key point that you're not allowed -- the Pakistani government says you're not allowed to put people in here.

From time to time we know there have been Special Forces operations in this area. How much of that is for public consumption? And how much of -- do you have the freedom, if you see something right here and you can get to it before the Pakistanis can, would you do it?

PETRAEUS: Well, I think the president made that clear the other day where he talked about consulting with the Pakistanis. But if it ultimately comes to it that we will, if necessary, take action.

Let me caveat that very, very carefully though. And that is that there is no intention for us to be conducting operations in there certainly on the ground, and there is every intention by the Pakistani military and their other forces to conduct those operations.

This is a very proud country. It has existing institutions. Our job is to enable those institutions, to help them develop the kinds of counterinsurgency capabilities that are needed and to help their entire government at large to conduct the kind of comprehensive effort that is necessary well beyond just the military effort, but one that then looks after displaced citizens, that tries to foster local economic development, and there was some of that in the president's speech as well.

KING: Much more to discuss with our two distinguished guests, General Petraeus and Ambassador Holbrooke. We'll be back in a minute. Among the topics, U.S. tensions with Iran. How close is that country to a nuclear weapon?

And of course, we're keeping our eye on the North Dakota where the Red River remains a flooding threat. We'll talk to Senator Kent Conrad, who is assessing the situation in his home state. STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're discussing the many challenges here with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke discussing the many challenges here.

We were just talking, gentlemen, about the problems, the many issues you have to deal with, the tough jobs you have with the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. I want to move, a little bit this way in the neighborhood is Iran.

Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs, was on this program a couple of weeks ago. And I put to him the question, does he agree with international assessments that Iran now has enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon?

Let's listen to Admiral Mullen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Does Iran have enough to make a bomb?

ADMIRAL MIKE MULLEN (USN), CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: We think they do, quite frankly. And Iran having a nuclear weapon, I've believed, for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome to for the region and the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, General, Secretary Gates, the same weekend, said, yes, they may have enough material but he doesn't think they're close to a weapon yet.

What is your assessment of the -- where they are in development of the weapon and what kind of a threat and a complication that makes your efforts in the rest of the very troubled neighborhood?

PETRAEUS: Well, Admiral Mullen clarified what it was that he was saying and he pointed out that there are additional steps required between having enough low-enriched uranium and actually having something that can be weaponized.

You have to highly enrich it. You have to actually do the physical package. You have to have delivery and so forth. The bottom line is that we think it's at least a couple of years away in that regard. It could be more. It could be a little bit less. There are certainly a lot of facts that we don't know about what goes on inside Iran.

KING: And is this -- is this regime being helpful when you deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan or are they trying to undermine what you doing over here, just as the administration -- the previous administration said repeatedly they tried to do what you were trying to solve in Iraq?

PETRAEUS: I think it's probably a mix. We have common objectives with Iran with respect to Afghanistan. They don't want to see the Taliban and the extremists elements that sought sanctuary there before return to running that country, certainly, a Sunni extremist organization, they, of course, being a Shia country.

They want to see a reduction in the flow of the illegal narcotics that has trapped many of their own citizens in addiction and so forth.

So there are common interests here, but there's also a sense, at times, we think, where they would certainly like us to bleed a bit more perhaps. They don't want to make it too easy for us. And certainly, they want to have a degree of influence, some of that legitimate, some perhaps a little less legitimate.

KING: Well, Ambassador Holbrooke, you will be in a meeting in the week ahead, I believe. I know Secretary Clinton will be there, in which Iranian diplomats will be in the room.

It is the highest-level contact in quite some time. What are your guidelines?

Where has the president said, Richard, if this comes up, you're allowed to talk about this. Let's say the Iranians come in and they're in a talkative mood and they want to talk about a lot of things. Where's your red line?

HOLBROOKE: Well, let's just see what happens in the Hague, John. I don't want to -- I don't want to forecast what's going to happen. Red lines? Well, we're not going to eradicate 30 years of bitter disagreements in one meeting.

But I want to be clear here that the United States has been asked repeatedly since January 20th how we feel about Iran participating in meetings on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And we've given the same answer to everyone. We have no objections. Iran is a neighbor. And as David Petraeus has just said, they have -- we and they have common concerns.

In 2002 they helped stand up the Karzai government. They hate the Taliban and they need stability on their eastern frontier.

On the other hand, we have enormous differences with them on their nuclear program, on Hezbollah, Hamas and many other issues. So this is a work in progress. We also have to be mindful of the interests of our very important friends and allies in the rest of the region.

And so it's a very complicated issue. But the door is open for Iran to participate in international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. Those must involve all the neighbors, including India, China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, plus our NATO allies.

So this -- we'll see how it goes.

KING: The vice president (sic) of the United States was a guest on this program two weeks ago. And he said something that caused a bit of a stir over at the White House and around town. I want you to listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Do you believe the president of the United States has made Americans less safe?

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I do. He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: General Petraeus, you served in the Bush administration under Vice President Cheney and President Bush. You're now serving in the Obama administration.

Are the American people less safe because of this new president, as Vice President Cheney says?

PETRAEUS: Well, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, John. I think that, in fact, there is a good debate going on about the importance of values in all that we do. I think that, if one violates the values that we hold so dear, that we...

KING: You mean torture?

PETRAEUS: ... we jeopardize -- well, in fact, I put out a memorandum to the soldiers in the Multinational Force-Iraq, when I was the commander, because of concern that we may not be taking some of these seriously enough.

As you know, the field manual came out, from the Army, that is used by all of the different services that completely, clearly outlaws torture. So we think for the military, in particular, that can't -- that's a line that can't be crossed.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: So was the line crossed in the Bush administration?

Was the line crossed? Did you do things which you fundamentally thought were wrong and immoral?

PETRAEUS: We certainly did not. Now, there were some incidents that did, and we learned some very hard lessons from Abu Ghraib and other cases. And we believe that we took corrective measures in the wake of that. And that is very, very important.

But it is hugely significant to us to live the values that we hold so dear and that we have fought so hard to protect over the years.

KING: I want to talk through a timeline of Iraq. The American people came to know General David Petraeus as the general who turned around -- and many would accept that statement -- a flawed strategy in Iraq.

I want to go through a timeline. Then-state senator Barack Obama, way back in 2002, said he thought the Iraq war was a fundamental mistake and he opposed it.

And then, as a senator of the United States and a candidate for president, he spoke out quite passionately against the surge strategy. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The responsible course of action for the United States, for Iraq and for our troops is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: As president of the United States, shortly after taking office, he was unveiling new Iraq strategy. He called you "brilliant," General Petraeus, and he said this. It sounds a little different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Under tough circumstances, the men and women of the United States military had served with honor and succeeded beyond any expectation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And then recently, in a 60 minutes interview, he, almost under his breath, said something to the effect of who knew Iraq would be the least of his problems as president of the United States.

He has never publicly -- President Obama has never publicly said, you know what, I was wrong; the surge was the right strategy. Has he told you that?

PETRAEUS: Well, we haven't actually talked about the surge. What we talked about is looking forward. And I think it's very important, actually, at points like this, to take the rearview mirrors off the bus, as we say, and look -- look ahead. That has been the focus.

I think you know that, on the day after the inauguration, the first full day in office, the president sat down with the commander from Iraq by video teleconference, myself in the situation room, the chairman, the secretary of defense, the other members of the national security team and discussed Iraq.

And that's what launched the review of the Iraq policy that eventually culminated in the address at Camp Lejeune, something that General Odierno, Ambassador Crocker and I support, something to which we had substantial input, and we think quite a pragmatic and proper, prudent way forward.

KING: Ambassador Holbrooke, you were a fierce critic of the Bush approach in Iraq. In the political debate about it here in Washington, though, many Democrats will tell you privately, you know what, I was wrong; the surge worked because of David Petraeus and that, you know, President Bush, in the end, and John McCain and Joe Lieberman were right.

Why is that such a hard thing for Democrats to say?

HOLBROOKE: I -- I'm not going to partisanize the discussion here. But I do want to say something about Dave Petraeus, whom I did not know until about three months ago and then fate and destiny put us together as counterparts.

I think the nation owes General Petraeus a debt of gratitude for what he's achieved in Iraq. And I am confident, absolutely confident, having known the entire United States military chain of command from General Westmoreland in Vietnam on, that we now have the best team we possibly could have on the ground, from Admiral Mullen to General Petraeus to the command in Afghanistan.

And I'm proud to work with them. And we all ought to acknowledge what has been achieved.

Now, in regard to the previous comment that you played, by the former vice president of the United States, I need to say -- and I hope I can do this in a spirit of bipartisanship and nonbipartisanship, that I don't have a clue what he's talking about.

We are treating Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theater. We are going to address it in an integrated way. We are going to give it more resources. And that is where the people planning the next attack on the United States or on our European allies are certainly doing it. So I just do not understand what his comments were referenced to.

KING: All right. We will leave it there. Ambassador Holbrooke being very diplomatic. We'll catch you next campaign season. We'll see if that stays the same.

(LAUGHTER) Ambassador Holbrooke, General Petraeus, on a serious note, you both have very difficult work in the days and weeks ahead and we certainly, as Americans, we wish you very well in that work.

Good luck to both of you. And thanks for coming in this morning.

Transcript: Secretary of Defense Gates on Fox News Sunday (29 March)

HOST CHRIS WALLACE: This week, President Obama took ownership of the war in Afghanistan. Here for an exclusive interview on the new strategy as well as other tough challenges around the world is the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

And, Mr. Secretary, welcome back to “FOX News Sunday.”

GATES: Thank you, Chris.

WALLACE: Let’s start with President Obama’s mission statement Friday on the new strategy in Afghanistan. Here it is.



OBAMA: ... that we have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: President Bush used to talk about building a flourishing democracy. Has President Obama narrowed our mission and, if so, why? GATES: I think the -- the near-term objectives have been narrowed. I think our long-term objective still would be to see a flourishing democracy in Afghanistan.

But I think what we need to focus on and focus our efforts is making headway in reversing the Taliban’s momentum and strengthening the Afghan army and police, and -- and really going after Al Qaida, as the president said.

WALLACE: Yeah, I’m going to pick up on that. The president said that Al Qaida is actively planning attacks against the U.S. homeland. Does Al Qaida still have that kind of operational capability to plan and pull off those kinds of attacks?

GATES: They certainly have the capability to plan, and in many ways they have metastasized, with elements in North Africa, in the Levant, in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere, and they aren’t necessarily directly controlled from Al Qaida in western Pakistan, but they are trained there. They often get guidance from there and inspiration from there.

So I think they do have those capabilities. They clearly have been inhibited by all the things that have been done over the last six or seven years.

WALLACE: When you say they still have those capabilities to pull off an attack on the U.S. homeland, do you still regard them as a very serious threat?

GATES: I still regard them as a very serious threat, yes.

WALLACE: U.S. commanders in the field wanted more combat troops than the 17,000 that President Obama committed.

Why did he decide against committing all of those additional combat troops? And will there be enough for the kind of counterinsurgency, living among the population, protecting the population, that was so key to the success of the surge in Iraq?

GATES: Well, let me be very clear about this. The president has approved every single soldier that I have requested of him. I have not sent any requests for units or troops to the president so far that he has not approved.

Now, the reality is I’ve been at this a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever in several decades run into a ground commander who thought he had enough troops. That’s probably true in all of history.

But we have fulfilled all of the requirements that General McKiernan has put down for 2009, and my view is there’s no need to ask for more troops, ask the president to approve more troops, until we see how the troops we -- he already has approved are in there, how they are doing, what the Europeans have done. And we will be reviewing that come the end of the year.

WALLACE: And are there enough for the kind of counterinsurgency tactics -- living in the population, protecting the population -- that we saw so successful in Iraq?

GATES: Well, based on the requirements that have been levied by General McKiernan for 2009, that would be his view, I think.

And the reality is there already are a lot of troops there. This will bring us, when all is said and done, to about 68,000 troops, plus another 35,000 or so Europeans and other partners.

WALLACE: What kind of long-term commitment has the president given you? Has he promised you that he will stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban, in fact, are -- and Al Qaida are defeated?

GATES: He has clearly -- he clearly understands that this is a very tough fight and that we’re in it until we’re successful, that Al Qaida is no longer a threat to the United States, and that -- and that we are in no danger of either Afghanistan or the western part of Pakistan being a base for Al Qaida.

By the same token, I think he’s been clear -- and frankly, it was my view in our discussions -- that we don’t want to just pursue -- settle on this strategy and then pursue it blindly and open-endedly.

And that’s why I felt very strongly that toward the end of the year or about a year from now we need to reevaluate this strategy and see if we’re making progress.

WALLACE: But the strategy is subject to review. The commitment to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaida -- is that subject to review?

GATES: I don’t think so.

WALLACE: That is the commitment.

GATES: Certainly, to defeat Al Qaida and -- and make sure that Afghanistan and western Pakistan are not safe havens for them.

WALLACE: There were reports this week that elements of Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, are providing the Taliban and other extremists with money, supplies, even tips on allied missions against them. One, is it true? And two, if so, can we stop it?

GATES: Well, the way I would answer is to say that we certainly have concerns about the contacts of -- between the Pakistani intelligence service and the -- and some of these groups in the past.

But the reality is the Pakistanis have had contacts with these groups since they were fighting the Soviets 20 or 25 years ago when I first was dealing with the Pakistanis on this, and I must say also helping make sure that some of those same groups got weapons from our safe haven in Pakistan.

But with people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haghani [Haqqani] network, the Pakistanis have had contacts with these people for a long time, I think partly as a hedge against what might happen in Afghanistan if we were to walk away or whatever. What we need to do is try and help the Pakistanis understand these groups are now an existential threat to them and that we will be there as a steadfast ally for Pakistan, that they can count on us and that they don’t need that hedge.

WALLACE: There’s a NATO summit coming up next week in Europe. Have we given up on the idea of getting our allies to send more combat troops to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan?

GATES: No, we haven’t. And in fact, I think some of our allies will send additional forces there to provide security before the August elections in Afghanistan.

But I think what we’re really interested in for the longer term from our partners and the allies is helping us with this civilian surge in terms of experts in agriculture, and finance, and governance and so on, to help us improve the situation inside Afghanistan, give a sense of forward progress on the part of the Afghan people.

Also, police trainers -- you know, the Caribinieri, the Guardia Seville, these various groups in Europe are really very good paramilitary-type police, and I think they could do a good job in the police training, so those will be probably the principal focus of our requests.

WALLACE: New subject. North Korea says that it will launch a communications satellite sometime in the next few days. They have, in fact, even moved a missile out to the launch pad. Several questions. Why are we so troubled by an activity that the North Koreans say is civilian?

GATES: Well, I think that they’re -- I don’t know anyone at a senior level in the American government who does not believe this technology is intended as a mask for the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

WALLACE: Do we believe that they now have the ability to put a nuclear warhead on top of a missile, as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Maples, suggested?

GATES: I think that we believe that that’s their long-term intent. I personally would be skeptical that they have the ability right now to do that.

WALLACE: The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Admiral Keating, says that we are, quote, “fully prepared” to shoot down this missile. Are there any circumstances under which we will do that?

GATES: Well, I think if we had an aberrant missile, one that was headed for Hawaii, that looked like it was headed for Hawaii or something like that, we might consider it. But I don’t think we have any plans to do anything like that at this point.

WALLACE: What if it were headed for the West Coast, for Alaska?

GATES: Well, we -- I don’t think we believe this missile can do that.

WALLACE: And what about the Japanese? Obviously -- would -- they have some of our technology. Do we believe they’re going to -- prepared to shoot this down?

GATES: Well, again, based on what I read in the newspapers, what the Japanese are saying is that the -- if that missile fails, and it looks like it’s going to drop debris on Japan, that they might take some action.

WALLACE: You’re basically discussing this, Mr. Secretary, as if it’s going to happen.

GATES: The launch?

WALLACE: Yeah.

GATES: I think it probably will.

WALLACE: And there’s nothing we can do about it?

GATES: Nope.

WALLACE: And what does that say to you?

GATES: Well, I would say we’re not prepared to do anything about it.

WALLACE: There are reports -- well, let me -- I want to stay with that. What does that say to you about the North Korean regime, that -- that we and the rest of the world can all say that this is -- you know, a provocative act, an unlawful act, and they thumb our noses and we’re not going to do anything about it?

GATES: Well, I think it’s very troubling. The reality is that the six-party talks really have not made any headway any time recently.

There has certainly been no -- if this is Kim Jong-il’s welcoming present to a new president, launching a missile like this and threatening to have a nuclear test, I think it says a lot about the imperviousness of this -- of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures.

WALLACE: There are reports that the Obama White House has asked you to cut $2 billion from the next budget for missile defense, roughly 20 percent. Is this president less committed? Is he less convinced that this program will work than President Bush was?

GATES: Well, I don’t know about the comparison. I would say -- I would tell you that I have not received any specific requests from the White House in terms of our budget. We’ll be talking about that. We have the top line number.

We receive what we call a pass-back from the Office of Management and Budget, but I considered the suggestions that they made simply those, suggestions. I’ve taken some of them and some of them I haven’t.

WALLACE: But do you regard there is a new skepticism in the part of the White House towards missile defense?

GATES: I think that -- I think one of the things that we need to do is sit down and go through the capabilities that we have, the tests that we’ve been through, and -- and focus on where -- where we need to sustain development, where we need to sustain a commitment to have a capability.

WALLACE: So it sounds like that’s under review.

GATES: I think so.

WALLACE: There are so many trouble spots around the world, but I want to do a lightning round tour of the horizon. I know this is not your thing, Mr. Secretary, but let’s try to do quick questions, quick answers.

Iraq -- do you see any developments so far that might cause you to have to slow down President Obama’s time line to pull out of the major cities by this summer and to get our combat troops out by August of 2010?

GATES: I haven’t seen anything at this point that would lead me to think that there will be a need to change the time lines.

WALLACE: Iran -- you said recently -- you said recently that they are not close to a nuclear weapon. Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says that they have enough material to make a bomb. Is there a contradiction there?

GATES: No. What they have is -- is probably enough low-enriched uranium from their centrifuges at Natanz to give them the capacity should they then enrich it more highly to proceed to make a weapon. They don’t have the capability at this point to enrich. We were suspicious they may be building one clandestinely.

We do not believe they are doing enriching beyond a low level at Natanz, and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is in there, so we will know if they tried to do that. So I guess the point -- the bridge between what Admiral Mullen said and what I’ve said is they do have enough low-enriched uranium that if they should then proceed to enrich it more highly, they could build a weapon.

WALLACE: You expressed, I think it would be fair to say, extreme skepticism about the ability of diplomacy to alter the behavior of the North Koreans. Do you feel the same way about the Iranians?

GATES: Well, I think -- I think, frankly, from my perspective the opportunity for success is probably more in economic sanctions in both places than it is in diplomacy.

Diplomacy -- perhaps if there is enough economic pressure placed on Iran, diplomacy can provide them an open door through which they can walk if they choose to change their policies, and so I think the two go hand in hand, but I think what gets them to the table is economic sanctions.

WALLACE: A couple of more questions for the lightning round. Mexico -- the Pentagon issued a report in November on the growing drug violence there that said this, “An unstable Mexico could represent a homeland security problem of immense proportions to the United States.”

Mr. Secretary, how likely is that scenario, that the Mexican government loses control of part of the country?

GATES: I don’t think that’s a likely scenario at this point. I think that a lot of the violence is -- is among or between the cartels as they strive for control of certain areas in Mexico.

I think President Calderon has acted with enormous courage and forcefully in sending troops in to try and get control of that situation.

And I think that -- as I think Admiral Blair testified just in the last couple of days, I think that the chances of the Mexican government losing control of some part of their country or becoming a failed state is -- are very low.

WALLACE: In January, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gave a one-word answer, “yes,” when asked if this president is going to end the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” for gays in the military.

Where does that stand? And why is there currently money in the 2010 budget to keep enforcing that policy?

GATES: Well, it continues to be the law. And any change in the policy would require a change in the law. We will follow the law, whatever it is.

That dialogue, though, has really not progressed very far at this point in the administration. I think the president and I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now, and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.

WALLACE: And finally, and we have just a minute left, President Bush used to talk about the global war on terror. This administration, this White House, seems to steer away from that.

In fact, in his speech on Friday, President Obama talked about a campaign against extremism. Beyond the words, is there a strategic difference between the way these two presidents see the fight?

GATES: I think that they -- they both see Al Qaida as a threat to the United States, Al Qaida and its extremist allies. And I think they both have made clear their determination to go after it.

We have the opportunity now that perhaps we did not have before to apply the kind of resources, both military and civilian, against it and a broader kind of strategy that we did not have before.

WALLACE: But a difference between saying war on terror or campaign against extremism...

GATES: I think that’s people looking for differences where there are none.

WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, I want to thank you so much for coming in. We got through everything. Thank you. Please come back, sir.

GATES: My pleasure. Thank you.